Incredibly, some Republican Party media megaphones have been making the case that Bush deserves credit for the actions of Obama in eliminating Osama bin Laden. There is something particularity rank about this tack. It is one thing to credit the operatives in the field, but quite another to commend a far-removed gas bag like Genghis Bush with the kill. That is if you support what some are calling an extra-judicial killing. A Gallup survey indicates that “More than 9 in 10 Americans approve of the U.S. military action that killed Osama bin Laden on Sunday.”

What will it take for certain Republicans to give credit where credit is due? Would BHO need to switch parties (a minor ideological conversion, really).

The same Gallup poll shows, however, that, “Thirty-five percent say he deserves a great deal of credit and another 36% say he deserves ‘a moderate amount’ of credit. More than a quarter say he does not deserve much or any credit at all.”

This is probably a function of the general antipathy toward Obama’s policies, and not an objective assessment of the operation in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

Rest assured that if something had gone wrong, the sitting president would have been blamed. “Former President Jimmy Carter knows about that,” notes the Huffington Post. “In 1980, Carter approved a plan to rescue the American hostages in Iran that ended in failure and left eight American servicemen dead. The botched mission was cited as one factor in Carter’s defeat when he ran for re-election.”

The attempt to drag Bush into this says something about the convergence of the two parties on matters of foreign policy. Obama has “embraced his inner neocon.” As a consequence, Republicans have few bones to pick with the president on the foreign policy front. What remains in their bag of political tricks is to make hay of his exotic origins (birth certificate), or to claim that his predecessor paved the way for (what they perceive to be) his recent success.

In any event, Bush’s military signature is the Daisy Cutter.